The most audacious startup accelerator in New York doesn’t have demo days, venture partners or a waitlist, but it does have kettlebells, treadmills and cold plunges.
The Flatiron location of Chelsea Piers Fitness has become an unlikely de facto office for some of the city’s most notable young tech entrepreneurs.
“We have an amazing community of absolute killers here,” Oliver Brocato, the 24-year-old founder of the viral aphrodisiac chocolate brand, Tabs, told NYNext.
Brocato is one of half a dozen 20-something men who work out of the gym six or seven days a week. They call themselves the “Media Mafia,” they all run new media companies generating at least seven figures per year and they’re pumped about working and working out together.
“I’d move to frickin’ Antarctica and back to be around this group,” Brocato said.
If the “Mafia” had a godfather, it would be Matt Epstein. He’s the 23-year-old founder of Shown Media, which produces branded launch videos and is generating about $3 million in annual revenue.
He started the company in 2021, working out of his room in his frat house at Cornell. After graduating in 2024, he moved to the city and started operating from his apartment. But, “working [from home] got very depressing very quickly,” Epstein told NYNext. Early last year, he toured the gym, signed up and started using it as his office every day.
For similar reasons, Nathan May, 27, followed suit.
“Community is the most important thing [we get here],” said May, whose newsletter company, The Feed Media, works with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and does about $400,000 per month in revenue. “Being around each other dramatically increases our surface area of luck.”
Besides the sense of camaraderie, there are practical benefits to the arrangement.
At roughly $300 a month, membership costs far less than an office lease. The lounge space has fast WiFi, natural light and a café. Plus, it’s almost mandatory to sneak in a few sets on the bench between calls and strategizing sessions.
“Working out of a gym, you feel like a piece of s— if you don’t work out,” Brocato said.
After scaling Tabs to $11 million in revenue, he is now running Bustem, an AI-powered firm that takes down e-commerce copycats for 140 brands. Brocato manages eight full-time employees and 20 contract workers in Africa and expects to generate about $5 million in revenue this year. Some of the younger members of the mafia look to him, May, and the tribe’s other elders for advice.
“We talk about problems we’re facing — hiring, scaling, girls,” Shamus Madan told NYNext. “Your typical 20-year-old dude stuff.”
Madan, 20, founded Dealroom Media, a LinkedIn ghostwriting service for founders, from his dorm room at Villanova in November 2024. By early 2025, he was generating $8,000 a month and, as he tells it, spending no time studying. He was academically dismissed from the university last June and started working out of the gym the following month. Dealroom is now on track to bring in $1.5 million in 2026, and he attributes his company’s success, in part, to working out of the gym.
“It feels like the college experience I didn’t have,” Madan said. “Like we’re in a frat but we all have some money.”
Indeed. On a recent Friday morning, at least two of the bro-trepreneurs were sporting Rolexes — and one stayed on during the afternoon lift. One dude missed our scheduled interview because he overslept. A single of pair workout shorts was used by no less than three of the guys in a single day. Twice, a gym staff member came to the communal table where they were all working and reminded them of the space’s quiet policy.
Fratty moments aside, serious work is being done. There a tangible benefits to exchanging ideas over berry smoothies — the founders advise one another on sales call strategy, deck presentations and investor pitches.
“We all know the ins-and-outs of each other’s businesses and can provide instant feedback,” said J.T. Sarafa, 25, whose TikTok shop agency, JTS Growth, has generated $30 million for clients and is on pace for a $3 million run rate in 2026. “It’s like having your Board of Advisors around all the time.”
Epstein added, “There’s a ton of customer sharing. We all have our own niche but offer very similar services.”
The accelerator has grown so strong, in fact, members have begun to outgrow it.
Epstein recently moved to an actual office space because Shown Media has grown to roughly 40 employees.
He splurged on a slightly bigger than necessary space, he said, so “the buddies can roll through” when they need a change of scenery.
This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC’s power players (and those who aspire to be).
It’s just seven blocks up and one avenue over from the gym. And he’s kept his membership.
After all, Madan said, “Gotta stay looking like a stud.”
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